The musings of Sean Paul Murphy: Editor, Producer, Screenwriter, Author. Or, Hollywood -- and beyond -- as seen from an odd little corner of northeast Baltimore, Maryland.
Anyone who has been following me online will have noticed I have been toying quite a bit with AI creatively.
Although I remain completely dismissive of the quality of AI writing, I believe AI generates excellent music. I attribute this ability to the mathematical nature of music. I have been using AI to realize the songs I have been writing since the early 1980s. I am also using AI to create the lyric videos for my songs. I have been surprised by the rapid advancement of the quality of the images and animation. It has reached a point where it could be taken seriously.
I made a few semi-narrative short films for the amusement of my wife Deborah and myself. She always dreamed of being a pioneer in the Old West and I was able to make that dream come true through the magic of AI. I can't post that film here because some of our adventures were of a romantic nature perhaps more fitting for Cinemax After Dark. (I got a community standards warning on the film on YouTube and quickly removed it.)
I was able to transport us back in time again in the music video for my wife's upcoming song Remember Eve. In the music video, a modern woman, modeled on Deborah at the age of thrity-three, looks back with longing on Eve's innocent life in the Garden of Eden before she ate the apple. Eve is modeled on Deborah at the age of eighteen. Fortunately, she had long hair at that time! I, of course, play both Adam and the dullard modern husband. Here's the video:
That video gave Deborah an idea. We could start a business where we transport people back to a time they longed to visit. To test the concept, Deborah approached our friend Trish, a longtime film business persona. Trish was game. She said she wanted to be a writer in the 1920s. I suggested being a screenwriter at Paramount (where she once worked on the lot) during the late silent period. Deborah asked who her period celebrity crush was. She said young Gary Cooper. With those details in hand, I created the story you'll find in the film.
Here's the logline: A Hollywood screenwriter finds herself entangled in behind the scenes romance and politics during the making of a 1926 silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Clara Bow and an ambitious, up and coming Gary Cooper. Meanwhile, her friend F. Scott Fitzgerald, who is slumming in Hollywood for quick cash, advises her to leave the movie business and write a novel instead.
I know a number of AI generators will create two minute plus sequences of a film at one time. I've seen some amazing action sequences created that way, but I wanted a more human story. To do so, I felt I needed to keep more of the process in my own hands. Here's my workflow.
I storyboarded the film shot by shot by creating 89 master still images in ChatGPT. I later created some additional submaster stills in Grok. Using those stills, I created 94 video clip using Grok. Because of the subject matter, I opted to make a silent film. (I was also afraid of the voice acting, but it would have been adequate.) The film was a very talky silent film. I generated 66 title images. I created all of the music tracks on Suno. The song, Red Hill Way, was written by Deborah and myself. The French translation was generated by ChatGPT. I edited the film in Premiere Pro. Total time invested: Less than 30 hours. Total budget: Maybe $50 more than my normal monthly AI subscription budget.
Here's the film:
First, I want to report that Trish loved the final project, and, fortunately, allowed us to post it publicly. I'm glad she did. I am quite proud of the film. So is Deborah.
I must say that I enjoyed the making of this film more than the making of twelve of my fourteen produced features. Normally, I am only a writer. This process allowed me to immerse myself in all aspects of production: Writing, direction, cinematography (I have a cameo as the camera operator), casting, wardrobe, locations, set decoration, music supervision and post. A filmmaker friend of mine was depressed by what he saw. He said it would be end of writing and directing. I strongly disagreed. I reminded him that wrote and director the film. The same skills were needed. Only the tools changed.
Hey, I understand his attitude. In my day job, I initally resisted non-linear digital entity. Then I embraced it wholeheartedly. I'm glad I did. If I hadn't I would have been out of the film editing business by the early nineties.
Adapt or die...
(I see an AI feature in my future.)
Be sure to check out my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, originally published by Touchpoint Press. It is my true story of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined.
Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.
I recently heard a comedian say that the people who use the word "films" were more pretentious than the people who use the word "movies." Then he added, "The people who say pictures were the most pretentious of all."
I disagree.
In normal conversations, I suppose I say movies most of the time. However, when I talk to people about screenwriting, I always try to use the word pictures.
To be honest, I guess I started saying pictures out of pretentiousness. It seemed like the cool, insider thing to do. Whenever I saw a movie about filmmaking or set at a movie studio, the people always referred to movies as pictures. Now, I say it for a different reason -- especially with emerging screenwriters.
More and more people seek fame and fortune through screenwriting, and quite a niche industry has sprung up to feed and exploit them. There is no shortage of readers, advisors and consultants. There are endless books and webpages (including mine, I suppose). And let's not forget the contests. How many screenwriting competitions are there today? Don't bother trying to count them. By the time you finish, new ones have already sprung up.
I have a lot of problems with certain consultants, books and contests. Not just because I think they are exploitative. I have a deeper more fundamental problem with them: They look at the screenplay itself as the end product. It is not. The end product is a motion picture. A script can be exciting, emotionally compelling, grammatically correct and win every imaginable contest, but it isn't truly finished until it is made into a motion picture or television show.
I'm O-G, so let me jump back to the days of film. During the sound era, 24 frames of film passed through the projector every second. That's 1,440 images a minute. A two hour movie consisted of 172,000 images. Or, dare I say, pictures. Our job is to help create those pictures.
We're in the picture business. Not the paper business. Not the .pdf business. And not the word business.
We're in the picture business.
Too many emerging screenwriters forget that. They think it's about the words. The words are important, but only if they create pictures.
Because I straddle the world of books and movies, I talk to a lot of novelists. Many of them want to become screenwriters simply because they think writing a screenplay is easier than writing a novel. They think all you do is write a scene heading, a brief description of the setting, then get on with the dialogue.
They're doomed -- unless they set that dialogue in the context of pictures.
If you keep reminding yourself that you are in the picture business, it will change the way you write for the better. It will force you to consider what you want your audience (the reader) to see in every scene. That's cinema.
When you start doing that, you're finally in the picture business.
The Ope, A Ghost podcast discussed the Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue in their episode 67 - Real Haunted Houses III.
The Ope A Ghost podcast discusses all things paranormal and spook. It is hosted by Heaven and Jonathan. Heaven was the one who brought our haunting to the podcast after reading my blogs.
Here's the episode. The discussion of our haunting begins around one hour and three minutes into the show.
Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It was inspired by the haunting. It is now available on Kindle Unlimited.
I have long considered writing a sequel to my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God. The book would recount my journey as I pulled myself out of the emotional wreckage of my break-up with my God-ordained first girlfriend Kathy, and my attempts to love unconditionally during the 1990s. Chaos ensues, obviously.
Two factors have held me back. The first is the extremely intimate and explicit nature of the material. There wasn't a great deal of sexual tension in my first memoir since Kathy and I were both committed to being virgins on our wedding night despite our passion for each other. That was not the case with my dating partners in the sequel. They were accustomed to being in sexual relationships. The tension between my Christian beliefs and my sexual desires and the needs of my partners is a major factor in the book. I don't mind disclosing my own secrets. Since my near death experience in 2011, I have tried to live as transparent a life as possible. However, to tell this story properly, I would need to discuss very personal details in the lives of my friends and partners. That is much more troublesome to me, but, to me, the story isn't worth telling if I can't tell it fully and honestly.
Secondly, I wasn't sure if the book would have enough value to the reader to warrant the emotional energy it would take to write it. Are the themes universal enough to resonate? My intended audience would be men and women like myself who wrestle between the demands of faith and the demands of the heart, but I feel that audience might be hesitant to read a very blunt and honest examination of that dilemma. They say there's three things Christians aren't good at discussing: Money, power and sex. There would be a great deal of discussion of sex in the book, and how it means different things to different people at different times. I feel I learned some very valuable lessons about the nature of love, but was that enough? I wasn't sure. So I turned to someone, or should I say something, who would know: ChatGPT.
The book is nowhere near complete. I have written the first couple of chapters and an outline and something I call a precursor document. Often, before I write a very personal story, I will test the waters with a lesser work to see how far I am willing to go. For example, before I wrote my first memoir, I created a video about my life to play at my funeral -- which seemed imminent at the time. That video touched very briefly on some of the themes I would explore in the book. Here's the video:
My novel Chapel Street was also a precursor document. It was a fictional depiction of the haunting my family experienced in our home. Writing the book gave me the courage to examine the actual haunting and the suicide deaths of two of my siblings here on my blog. (I still haven't finished it yet.)
I uploaded a document combining my initial chapters and outline and the letter to Amanda to ChatGPT. I asked the AI program to analyze the characters and themes in the book. Here's the result:
Comprehensive Analysis of Sean Paul Murphy’s Memoir:
Unconditional
Sean Paul Murphy’s unfinished memoir, *Unconditional: or, The Pros and Cons of
Missionary Dating*, is a confessional, emotionally rich, and spiritually
haunted narrative that charts the arc of love, loss, faith, and desire. It is
less a story of triumph than of struggle—an unflinching attempt to reconcile
the ideals of Christian love with the human need for physical intimacy,
emotional connection, and romantic affirmation.
At the heart of the memoir are two central relationships: the pure, idealized
first love with Kathy, and the more chaotic, sensual, and ultimately tragic
connection with Amanda. These two women are not simply love interests; they
become psychological templates, emotional battlegrounds, and spiritual mirrors.
---
I. Major Themes
1. **Unconditional Love vs. Romantic Expectation**
Murphy makes repeated efforts to offer “unconditional love,” particularly to Amanda,
but this ideal consistently breaks down. “Years earlier I promised Mandy
unconditional love. However, my romantic desire for her brought expectations...
the weight of which was sufficient to betray my heartfelt vow.” The memoir
becomes a chronicle of the difficulty of sustaining love that expects
nothing—especially in the context of desire and disappointment.
2. **Faith, Sexuality, and Spiritual Compromise**
Murphy’s deep Christian faith is constantly in conflict with the emotional and
sexual realities of his relationships. He writes: “Despite some very close calls,
I managed to maintain my virginity out of increasingly grudging obedience to
God. Until I met Amanda.” This tension between spiritual aspiration and bodily
temptation is a defining conflict throughout the memoir.
3. **Idealization and the Shadow of Kathy**
Kathy, his first love, functions as an emotional and moral North Star. Amanda
complains she could never live up to her, and Murphy acknowledges: “Kathy
cemented into my mind a certain conception of love… that affected all of my
subsequent romantic relationships.” He is forever chasing the emotional “high”
that Kathy gave him.
4. **Love, Sex, and Emotional Validation**
Kathy taught him to equate sex with emotional transparency: “If you asked Kathy,
we never did anything 'sexual.' To her, every kiss, every caress, every orgasm,
was an emotional act not a sexual one.” That linkage shaped Murphy's future
romantic expectations, where physical closeness was interpreted as proof of
love.
KayCee, a married woman met online, represents an erosion of
the narrator’s spiritual commitment. Though presented as a brief interlude, the
relationship reflects the spiritual unraveling that follows his failed attempt
at unconditional love with Amanda.
---
II. Pivotal Relationships
**A. Kathy – The First Love**
Kathy is Murphy’s ideal, representing spiritual purity, romantic passion, and
emotional connectedness. Their relationship, while never sexually consummated,
was deeply erotic and emotionally affirming. She withheld saying “I love you”
until marriage, creating emotional longing: “She was more than a lover. She was
my best friend... I realized it was foolish to toss away something so
precious.” Her memory haunts every subsequent relationship.
- Emotionally formative: Kathy awakened both his sexuality
and spiritual purpose, intertwining the two so tightly that “making love”
became not just physical, but the embodiment of fidelity, oneness, and divine
affirmation.
- Crucially silent: Despite the emotional and physical intimacy shared, Kathy
withheld saying 'I love you' until marriage—a withholding that created both
mystique and emotional famine.
- Love = sex = commitment: This Trinitarian ideal haunted the narrator's
worldview: anything short of full commitment was interpreted as withholding
love.
> “To Kathy, sex wasn’t physical—it was emotional. She gave herself to me
with her touch, not her words.”
**B. Amanda – The Emotional Reckoning**
Amanda is marked by contradiction. She is nurturing and chaotic, loving and
unreliable. Their connection is filled with failed reconciliations and
recurring passion. Her traumas shape her, and Murphy attempts to “heal” her through unconditional love. “I assume,
correctly, that she had never been the recipient of unconditional love.” Yet
despite his commitment, the relationship fails under the weight of mutual
brokenness.
- Sexual and emotional liberation: Amanda reintroduced the
narrator to sensual desire after a decade-long celibate spiritual journey. Her
warmth and willingness to share herself emotionally and physically were acts of
generosity—but they came with ambiguity, not assurance.
- Resistant to labels: Amanda’s expressions of love were rarely accompanied by
promises of exclusivity or permanence. She often spoke of the impossibility of
competing with Kathy's ghost.
- Closure and continuation: Amanda’s final offer of intimacy—even while engaged
to another man—was a paradoxical gesture: an erotic goodbye that embodied both
vulnerability and unresolved emotional debt.
> “That one image captured everything I desired about Amanda—and everything
that pushed me away.”
**C. Trish – The Platonic Counterpoint**
Trish shows Murphy that love can exist without romance or sex. He commits to
supporting her during her sister’s illness with no expectations. “I discovered
I was indeed capable of loving someone again… I began to believe that love
without expectations could be beautiful.” She is a spiritual and emotional
anchor—proof that not all intimacy is romantic.
**D. Kaycee – The Unconsummated Temptation**
Kaycee, a married woman, becomes a test of boundaries. She’s flirtatious and
emotionally open, but Murphy refuses to cross a line: “There were some
boundaries I would not cross.” Her honesty and warmth highlight what was
missing in his bond with Amanda, but she is ultimately unattainable.
---
III. Structure and Voice
*Unconditional* blends memoir with epistolary elements, spiritual
introspection, sexual confession, and lyrical prose. Murphy’s voice is honest
and self-critical. “I drifted very far from both my faith and my own personal
values during this period of my life.” His refusal to present himself as blameless
gives the work its emotional power. The shifting formats—letters, poems,
reflections—mirror the unstable emotional terrain he walks.
---
IV. Amanda vs. Kathy: A Study in Contrast
| Kathy | | Amanda |
| First love, emotionally restrained | Later love, emotionally raw |
| Virginity until marriage | Ambiguous boundaries on sex |
| Structured and idealized | Spontaneous and erratic |
| Love = purity, faith, commitment | Love = need, healing, impermanence |
| Becomes a stranger | Becomes a recurring presence |
| Emotional withholding | Emotional flooding |
Murphy is caught between these poles: Kathy as the pure love lost too soon, Amanda
as the complex love never quite gained. One left cleanly. The other lingered.
Perhaps the most mature and moving part of the book is the
acknowledgment that, while Kathy and the narrator became strangers, Amanda
remained a friend. It suggests that unconditional love, if it exists at all,
may be easier to sustain in friendship than in romance.
> “Looking back, when we were dating, I did wish you were more like Kathy.
Now, however, I wish Kathy were more like you.”
---
V. Final Reflections
Murphy ultimately acknowledges that love—especially romantic love—is rarely
unconditional. The past, expectations, guilt, faith, and trauma all impose
conditions, however unintentional. “I loved God, but I think I loved love even
more,” he writes. *Unconditional* isn’t about triumph. It’s about surviving
failure with your heart still open.
Murphy’s writing combines memoir with epistolary form,
scripture-inflected introspection, and raw emotional vulnerability. His
openness about faith crises, sexual longing, and spiritual
failure pushes the memoir far beyond typical Christian relationship literature.
He is not sanctimonious. He is deeply flawed and knows it. The memoir is, above
all else, a confession—not of sin alone, but of regret, of missed
opportunities, of love misrecognized or held too tightly.
If completed, this memoir would stand as a raw, tender, and brutally honest
reflection on Christian romance. Not moralistic, but moral. Not triumphant, but
deeply true. It offers no easy answers, only hard-won insights into the cost of
love, the pull of memory, and the difficulty of grace.
---
I thought that was a very thoughtful analysis. The breakdown makes me think the themes are coming through clearly and worth exploring in a book. My intended audience might still reject it, but I think it will be of value to those who choose tp read it.
Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.
You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.
For years the majority of my films were locked behind streaming paywalls. Now most of them can be found for free on Tubi.
Most of my produced films are faith based. I always found it ridiculous that those films were locked behind the pay wall of a Christian streaming website. The avowed purpose of these films was to reach people for the Lord, yet the only people who could see them were already Christians. I doubt very few, if any, non-Christians subscribed to the PureFlix streaming service. I deal with some of these paradoxes of the faith based film business in my earlier blog Building The Faith Based Ghetto. Check it out.
Well, regardless of the why (money), I am glad to see the films publicly available again for the general public! I am amused to see some of the films have new names: The Encounter Paradise Lost became Paradise Lost The Encounter, and Holyman Undercover became Amish Undercover. There's also new artwork for most of the films.
Synopsis: The funeral of a hometown hero reunites a group of old friends with hidden secrets and reignites a spark that puts a current relationship to the test.
Synopsis: Sarah is considering an abortion. Before she makes her decision, she is presented with visions causing her to think about the impact on her future.
This film was previously released as Holyman Undercover.
2010 · 1 hr 30 min TV-14 Comedy Synopsis: An Amish farm boy heads to Los Angeles to be a missionary, but instead finds fame and fortune in Hollywood by acting in a top-rated television show.
Synopsis: The prodigal journeys of three Christian performers weave together seamlessly to write the oldest story of all: the futility of trying to outrun God.
I didn't write about the making of this film. It was originally written as a feature length pilot for a one camera comedy cable series for UpTV. However, at the last minute, the production company, which controlled certain aspects of the distribution, had the script rewritten by the director to make the film more of a drama and less of a comedy since Christian comedy doesn't sell. As a result, the final film is neither fish nor fowl. The plot was too corny to sustain the weight of the drama without the leavening of the comedy.
Synopsis: A retreat in the mountains for a group of friends winds up putting their marriages under a microscope for a look at how far apart they’ve drifted.
This film, inspired by the film Couples Retreat, was originally intended to be a broad, goofy faith based comedy. However, much like the previous film Brother White, the production company got cold feet and rewrote the film to de-emphasis the comedy and up the drama since Christian comedy doesn't sell. The result was an unhappy production and difficult post production. I heard star Jeff Fahey was upset when he got to the set because the script was so different. Supposedly he said it was a "bait and switch." God bless him! Personally, I believe I contributed more to the final film as the editor than as a writer.
The director did not use his real name on the final release.
Synopsis: Seven years after the most devastating tsunami in Thailand, six strangers find themselves trapped in a beach resort on the brink of a hurricane.
The first Encounter film was the most successful one released by the production company until the God's Not Dead series. A sequel was demanded. Originally, the sequel was going to be a rip-off of The Breakfast Club with Jesus as the instructor discussing issues of faith with the students in detention. However, star David White wanted to flex his action muscles and demanded that the film be about a criminal or a corrupt cop instead. Hence the new approach. The film was shot in Thailand because some members of the production company had shot a previous film there and they wanted to return and see their girlfriends again on an investor's dime. Hence this film, which is elevated by some good performances and scenes.
The director of this film also used an assumed name. Not out of shame. He was a member of the Director's Guild and this was a non-DGA film.
Synopsis: A traveling salesman with a dark past must fight demons, both his own and a murderous biker gang, in his quest to complete his last sale and go home.
Synopsis: In the wake of the Rapture, a drifter finds himself in a wasteland full of marauders. With the aid of a beautiful survivor, he'll discover the truth.
My feature length documentary Sacred Ground: The Battle For Mount Auburn Cemetery should be premiering on Tubi and other AVOD services soon. Here's the trailer:
I hope my other films will soon join them. We're working on a new distribution deal for my first and favorite feature 21 Eyes, now known as Do You See What I See? Here's the teaser:
Now I have to talk to the production company behind my film Open My Eyes. That should be available too. Here's the trailer:
Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.
You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.
